A brief, lyrical novel with a powerful emotional charge, Rules for Old Men Waiting is about three wars of the twentieth century and an ever-deepening marriage. In a house on the Cape “older than the Republic,” Robert MacIver, a historian who long ago played rugby for Scotland, creates a list of rules by which to…

Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church — the only available shelter from the rain — and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the days of suffering that preceded her new-found security.

This third instalment in a trilogy revisits the beloved characters and setting of ‘Gilead’ and ‘Home’.

It’s the 1870s and the independent, spirited Bathsheba Everdene has come to Weatherbury to take up her position as a farmer on the largest estate in the area. Her bold presence draws three very different suitors: the gentleman-farmer, soldier-seducer and the devoted shepherd. Each unsettles her decisions and complicates her life. But Bathsheba is fickle and tragedy ensues, threatening the stability of the whole community.

Colonial Kenya in the 1920s. Circling the Sun brings to life the fearless and captivating Beryl Markham, a record-setting aviator caught up in a passionate love triangle with safari hunter Denys Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen, who as Isak Dinesen wrote the classic memoir Out of Africa. Brought to Kenya from England as a child…

Martha Carrier was one of the first women to be accused, tried and hanged as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts.  This is the story of her courageous defiance and ultimate death, as told by the daughter who survived. Like her mother, young Sarah Carrier is bright and willful, openly challenging the small, brutal world in…

No one who reads it will look at this country the same way again. Most Australians live in cities and cling to the coastal fringe, yet our sense of what an Australian is – or should be – is drawn from the vast and varied inland called the bush.  But what do we mean by…

It can break your heart to have a sister like Virginia Woolf. London, 1905: The city is alight with change, and the Stephen siblings are at the forefront. Vanessa, Virginia, Thoby, and Adrian are leaving behind their childhood home and taking a house in the leafy heart of avant-garde Bloomsbury. There, they bring together a…

On her first day at a new school, Lily befriends one of the daughters of infamous avant-garde painter Evan Trentham. He and his wife are trying to escape the stifling conservatism of 1930s Australia by inviting other like-minded artists to live and work at their family home. Lily becomes infatuated with this wild, makeshift family…

Set in the 1990s at a time of hope in Nigeria and told from the point of view of nine year old Benjamin, The Fishermen is the story of an unforgettable childhood and of the tragedy of a middle class family. In particular, it’s the story of four brothers whose lives are shattered after the…

It is 1919. The Great War has ended, but the Spanish flu epidemic is raging across Australia. Schools are closed, state borders are guarded by armed men, and train travel is severely restricted. There are rumours it is the end of the world. In the town of Flint, Quinn Walker returns to the home he fled…

5th January 1800. Alma Whittaker is born into a perfect Philadelphia winter. Her father, Henry Whittaker, is a bold and charismatic botanical explorer whose vast fortune belies his lowly beginnings as a vagrant in Sir Joseph Banks’ Kew Gardens and as a deck hand on Captain Cook’s HMS Resolution. Alma’s mother, a strict woman from…

With their father, there’s always a catch . . . Colt Jenson and his younger brother Bastian have moved to a new, working-class suburb. The Jensons are different. Their father, Rex, showers them with gifts – toys, bikes, all that glitters most – and makes them the envy of the neighbourhood. To Freya Kiley and…